Project Northland III (Community Action to Prevent Adolescent Alcohol Problems) is a four-year efficacy trial (1995-1999) with goals to reduce the prevalence of heavy or binge drinking, and other alcohol-related problems, such as drinking and driving, with high school students. Project Northland III also seeks to reduce underage access to alcohol. This is an Interactive Research Proposal Grant, with Project Northland II, which adds school, parent, and peer programs to what is proposed in this application. This study builds on Project Northland I(1990-1995), which was successful in significantly delaying and preventing onset among young adolescents. Project Northland I involved 24 school districts and adjoining communities in northeastern Minnesota; half of the communities were randomly assigned to receive four years of intervention (1991-1995) targeted at the Class of 1998 during their sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, the time of greatest initiation of first use of alcohol; the other half of the communities were assigned to a reference condition. Project Northland Ill seeks to enlarge and enhance the effects of Project Northland I by impacting those students who were already using alcohol at the beginning of the study in 1991, by reducing access to alcohol, and by decreasing alcohol-related problems in this cohort as they move into high school. Project Northland III continues the same design as Project Northland I, with the same intervention and reference school districts and adjoining communities. The Project Northland III intervention involves extensive community organization using direct action strategies, including the initiation, training, and development of Policy Action Teams and Peer Action Groups in each community. Alcohol Policy Training Sessions for community leaders will further educate key community members in the region, so they can facilitate policy changes around adolescent alcohol use. Evaluation of Project Northland llI includes annual student surveys of the Class of 1998, which are described and budgeted in the Interactive Research Proposal Grant, Project Northland II. Outcome evaluation also involves alcohol purchase attempts to assess ease of purchase for underage youth in each community in 1998; alcohol merchant surveys in 1998; telephone surveys with parents of the entire Class of 1998 cohort in 1996 and 1998; interviews with high school principals, counselors, and counseling support staff in the community in 1996 and 1998; school and community archival data throughout the grant period, and newspaper content analyses from 1991 through 1998. Project Northland III provides the opportunity to work with communities and youth who have been educated about the problems associated with underage drinking and who are ready and prepared for the community organizing efforts proposed.